DragonWasabi
Very true, I agree with your points. Just like procuring a file of CSAM, procuring a shrunken head or even something like an elephant’s tusk would be imo contributing to a demand for more to be made, as well as perpetuating a culture where those things are desired or even accepted to a degree, which could in turn lead to even more morally unsound methods of producing/acquiring them.
However I would also add that I think even in the hypothetical where accessing or even storing/viewing some CSAM files somehow didn’t contribute to any more being produced or shared by anyone, it would still be fundamentally unethical to access it/store it/view it, because while the most clearly abusive component has already happened, continuing to view or use the product of those actions is further violating the child’s right to not have themselves commodified or exploited like that, and disrespecting their right to privacy… for the same reason that a peeping tom is violating someone’s right by spying on them in their privacy, even if the person doesn’t know it happened (except in this case, it’s a violation on top of another violation - the child has been exploited, and then people are further violating the child’s rights by viewing it).
This aspect of something being fundamentally unethical even if it doesn’t contribute to more bad things happening in a measurable/utilitarian sense but in more of a deontological way where the action itself is violating certain moral duties by disrespecting their bodily autonomy, is where I’m coming from by thinking that using/displaying the dismembered body part of a person is unethical regardless of whether doing so contributes to more of that product being created.
I think when it comes to consent, we usually do assume that someone’s not okay with something (or err on the side of caution that they might not be) rather than assume it’s okay to do something to a person unless they’ve explicitly requested that it not happen. It works the other way round, where we only do something to them if they’ve said it’s okay. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as helping someone when they can’t help themselves if it’s extremely critical or if it doesn’t violate them at all (like putting a warm garment over someone who’s fallen asleep in the cold), or what might be argued as necessary to do for a child’s development so that they can live a functional/healthy life. And then there are cases where it’d be ideal if we could not do anything, but the situation forces us to choose an option of what to do, such as dealing with someone’s dead body. In those cases I think the safest thing to do would be to choose one of the most common methods of interment, since 1. The person was likely aware (though not necessarily) of the main methods of disposing of someone’s body that are usually practiced by humans when someone dies, and probably had the opportunity during their life to object to them and request something different if they didn’t like it. 2. Those methods are generally regarded as the most respectful options available, and so statistically someone would be likely to also agree with that sentiment. 3. They’re also arguably some of the least invasive/violent/brutal ways of dealing with someone’s body, though of course none of them are completely nice since you’re disposing of a dead body after all.
So is necrophilia acceptable if the person doesn’t experience it and no one is around to see it?
If not I don’t really see why necrophilia is unacceptable but using a person’s distorted and preserved body as a display item is acceptable.
Doesn’t the consideration of what a person would have wanted/not wanted to happen to their body after their death matter? While someone is alive, even when unconscious (asleep), it is a violation to exploit or violate their body in some way without their consent. Why is it that as soon as someone dies and loses physical control of their body, we should no longer respect their bodily autonomy and it’s now fair game to do what we want with it? That’s still their body that they may have felt uncomfortable with people doing things to.
Yeah but it’s less brutal, violent and visceral than vultures tearing your body apart and leaving a skeleton. I agree cremation seems nicer actually but the fact remains that burying and cremation are the 2 most common ways of disposing a body, which the person (usually) had an opportunity to object to in their life if they preferred a different option, and generally seen as the most respectful & least invasive. So it can’t be perfect but not violating/desecrating/defiling or exploiting/using a body for something or disposing of it in an unconventional and gnarly way seems like a reasonable thing to do.
And keeping someone’s head preserved and distorted and using it for display purposes for all time seems way more disrespectful and exploitative of their bodily autonomy than really any form of just disposing of the body/laying it to rest normally.
“One’s rights end where another’s begin” - Morally speaking I agree with this, and I’ve heard this phrase used by animal rights activists to argue that humans shouldn’t have the right to violate animals’ (moral) rights to be free, to not be killed, harmed, exploited etc. at least by humans who are moral agents & don’t need to do so.
Again, there is a difference between moral and legal rights. Just like in the case of human slavery where some humans technically had the legal right to enslave other humans - and I would agree that those laws were unethical to begin with since the moral rights of those slave owners to do things (“positive” rights) ended where the moral rights of the victims to be free from oppression/harm/etc (“negative” rights) began - many people argue that the current legal rights of humans to, basically, enslave & kill non-human animals, are similarly built on unethical laws, and don’t translate to moral rights, in the sense that humans’ rights also end where other animals’ rights begin, morally speaking (such a position would of course entail action to liberate non-human animals via boycotting of animal exploitation (veganism) as a moral obligation, similarly to how when the laws that enabled people to own slaves were in place, boycotting the slave trade and being an abolitionist would also be considered a moral obligation by most people today).
I would also add that it seems that rights are a human concept/social construct, even just in the sense that we’re interpreting what we believe to be ethical/right/moral, even if it’s objectively correct; or we’re enforcing laws based on what people believe is correct, or in some cases what serves certain people personally at the expense of what most people believe is right if the laws are corrupt/undemocratic.
So I think if we’re going to claim that a certain right “just is”, since we’re the ones creating these concepts even if it’s based on our observation of the world and an interpretation that was theoretically objectively correct if not a belief, it falls on us to rationalise and describe how we’re coming to these conclusions and what we’re basing this assertion of a certain right on. Otherwise, “it’s a human right because it’s a human right” is just circular reasoning and has no explanation. How are we formulating our basis for what is a human right? Is it legality? Is it moral beliefs or what we reason (or even logically prove somehow) is objectively morally right? Or … what?
For example, in the case of animal rights theory, many people believe that there are moral rights that animals hold as moral patients, i.e. “negative rights” (= freedom from something being done to an individual) not to be exploited and killed by humans (moral agents), which extend logically from the belief (or fact) of human rights also being morally correct. And in this view, humans by way of our laws, do hold legally the “positive rights” (= freedom of an individual to do something) to exploit and kill animals, but these legal rights are simultaneously violating the moral rights of the animals to not have these things done to them by humans/moral agents.
In this case too, similar to what you said about the human condition, we could argue that something about the condition of animals (which could for example be sentience/consciousness, which they share with humans who are also animals), is the basis for them having these rights, but even then we’re still speculating based on what we believe is either subjectively or objectively moral (since in that case obviously what’s legal is in contradiction with what’s deemed to be moral), and I’m not sure what third definition of rights could be being applied there whether it be in the context of human rights or animal rights.
Human rights describes the individuals that the rights pertain to, no? So those human rights could either be based in legality or in morality, which wouldn’t always align. People may also have different beliefs about which human rights are morally justified and which ones aren’t. If there’s a third kind of human right that isn’t based on what’s legal or what’s believed to be (or, fundamentally is) moral, then what’s it based in?
Inherent to the human condition is interesting, but isn’t that still a moral stance/belief? Even if you argue that it’s objectively moral (and if you don’t believe in moral subjectivism/moral relativism) or objectively the right thing for humans to have rights based on the kind of beings that they are, how is that separate from morality? As far as I know when someone says “this is a human right” they’re usually asserting that they believe it’s morally correct for humans to have a certain right, and that it would be wrong to violate that right. Occasionally someone says “this is a legally protected human right” to emphasise that it’s a legal right enforced by law. I’m not sure by what metric rights could be ascribed or theorised conceptually to apply to certain individuals, if not law or ethics.
For example, you could say that the law did violate the enslaved’s moral human rights, by assigning other humans a legal right to own them, which many at the time would have also believed was their moral right, even if we don’t agree with that today or assert as being objectively immoral. If their human right to not be enslaved wasn’t legal or moral, I don’t see what the third option could be.
I’m fairly sure human rights can be used to describe either moral rights or legal rights. In most contexts people are using human rights in a moral sense, but it can be used in a legal sense too. If you’re arguing for a third definition of human rights which isn’t based in morality (what’s good) or legality (what’s been passed as law), then what is it based in?